Sunday, 25 September 2016

Digital Transformation has become a burning
question for all the businesses and the foundation to ride on the wave is being
data driven.

DJ Patil & Thomas Davenport mentioned in 2012
HBR article, that Data Scientist is the sexiest job of the century, and how
true! Even the latest Glassdoor ranked
Data Scientist at 1st in top 25 best jobs in America.

Over the last decade there’s been a massive
explosion in both the data generated and retained by companies. Uber, Airbnb,
Netflix, Wallmart, Amazon, LinkedIn, Twitter all process tons of data every
minute and use that for revenue growth, cost reductions and increase in
customer satisfaction.

Most industries such as Retail, Banking, Travel,
Financial Sector, Healthcare, and Manufacturing want to be able to make better
decisions. With speed of change and profitability pressures on the businesses, the
ability to take decisions had gone down to real time. Data has become an asset
for every company, hence they need someone who can comb through these data sets and apply their logic and use tools to find some patterns and provide insights
for future.

Think about Facebook, Twitter and other social mediaplatforms, smartphone apps, in-store purchase behavior data, online
website analytics, and now all connected devices with internet of things are
generating tsunami of new data streams.

All this data is useless if not analyzed for
actions or new insights.

The importance of Data Scientists has rose to
top due to two key issues:

Increased
need & desire among businesses to gain greater value from their data

Over
80% of data/information that businesses generate and collect is unstructured or
semi-structured data that need special treatment

They
need to employ the R or Python programming language to clean and remove irrelevant
data

Create
algorithms to solve the business problems

Finally
effectively communicate the findings to management

Any company, in any industry, that crunches
large volumes of numbers, possesses lots of operational and customer data, or
can benefit from social media streams, credit data, consumer research or
third-party data sets can benefit from having a data scientist or a data
science team.

Sunday, 18 September 2016

Although computers are better for data processing
and making calculations, they were not able to accomplish some of the most
basic human tasks, like recognizing Apple or Orange from basket of fruits, till now.

Computers can capture, move, and store the
data, but they cannot understand what the data mean. Thanks to Cognitive Computing,
machines are bringing human-like intelligence to a number of business
applications.

Cognitive Computing is a term that IBM had coined
for machines that can interact and think like humans.

In today's Digital Transformation age, various technological
advancements have given machines a greater ability to understand information,
to learn, to reason, and act upon it.

Today, IBM Watson and Google DeepMind are
leading the cognitive computing space.

Cognitive Computing systems may include the
following components:

·Natural Language Processing - understand
meaning and context in a language, allowing deeper, more intuitive level of
discovery and even interaction with information.

·Machine Learning with Neural Networks -
algorithms that help train the system to recognize images and understand speech

Cognitive computing can help banking and
insurance companies to identify risks and frauds. It analyses information to
predict weather patterns. In healthcare it is helping doctors to treat patients based on historical data.

Some of the recent examples of Cognitive
Computing:

·ANZ bank of Australia used Watson-based
financial services apps to offer investment advice, by reading through thousands of investments options and suggesting best-fit based on
customer specific profiles, further taking into consideration their age, life stage,
financial position, and risk tolerance.

·Geico is using Watson based cognitive computing
to learn the underwriting guidelines, read the risk submissions, and
effectively help underwrite

·Brazilian bank Banco Bradesco is using
Cognitive assistants at work helping build more intimate, personalized
relationships

·Out of the personal digital assistants we have
Siri, Google Now & Cortana – I feel Google now is much easy and quickly
adapt to your spoken language. There is a voice command for just about
everything you need to do — texting, emailing, searching for directions,
weather, and news. Speak it; don’t text it!

As Big Data gives the ability to store huge
amounts of data, Analytics gives ability to predict what is going to happen,
Cognitive gives the ability to learn from further interactions and suggest best
actions.

Saturday, 10 September 2016

The Digital Tsunami is moving at a rapid pace, encompassing
all aspects of business and society. It touches every function of a business
from purchasing, finance, human resources, operations, IT and technology, sales
and marketing and every other division in the business.

Understanding this dynamic and making the necessary changes,
is the context for digital transformation. The starting point is to assess your
businesses’ state of digital preparedness based not just on technology, but on
a comprehensive picture of digital integration and engagement throughout the
organization.

Digital transformation poses these top five challenges to businesses of
all sizes:

1.Culture: There is a fear to change with an
attitude of why fix something that isn’t broke? Company culture is the basis of
digital transformation. Without openness to change, either naturally or as a
specific initiative, digital transformation does not go as planned. It is
important to remind teams of the benefits that will directly impact them in a
positive way. Open communication is important when clarifying the purpose of a
digital transformation and identifying the role it will play in their daily
work routine.

2.Lack of Leadership support: Most of the
companies C-Suite is over 50 now and are digital immigrants. They have slowly
adapted to web surfing, emailing, texting and the instant world of social media.
Hence it is difficult for them to drive the digital transformation. They need
to set the tone by collaborating with managers on designing an
organization-wide digital strategy, while encouraging ongoing innovation. A dedicated Chief Digital Officer is one way to go.

3.Inter Department collaboration: It is essential
that all departments work together to bridge gaps, break down data silos, and
make important connections. Companies are challenged to get the right people in
their organization to work together to create a consistent experience across
the board.

4.Resource Crunch: With so many technologies paving up every
day, it is almost impossible to have people who know them well. Organizations
need to recruit for the future with jobs skills that they have not considered
to meet forthcoming changes in the digital marketplace.

5.Understanding Customer:Companies like Amazon, Uber, Airbnb and Tesla have changed
the expectations of the market forever. The average consumer now expects brands
to be able to understand their unique wants and needs and create a tailored
experience to suit. Most business leaders understand this principle but often
find themselves caught in a discussion about technology.

Though these are often the most prevalent challenges cited by
organizations going through digital transformation, countless others exist like,
identifying right digital opportunities, right technology selection etc.

To meet the manifold
challenges posed by digital transformation, individuals and organizations should have
the confidence and commitment to make digital integration a strategic
imperative. The success will depend on whether every employee and manager is
ready to anticipate, innovate and participate in each step of Digital Transformation.

Saturday, 3 September 2016

In this Digital age, Superheroes are becoming more popular…. Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Avengers Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and many more…

There are a lot of superheroes and it is up to you to decide in which character and style you fit in. You don’t need masks, tights and a cape to qualify, but a zeal to demystify the role of the truly transformational leader, superhero style!

“With great power comes great responsibility.” We have heard this quote, in Spiderman. This quote can also be used as a mantra for Digital Transformation.

A CEO should be like The Hulk, who when angered or provoked, would transform into the uncontrollable, green-skinned monster. CEO should be giving a very strong message of Digital Transformation to the entire organization, which everyone should take seriously. He or she runs the company and does this from a digital-native perspective, by personally taking up the digital agenda.

CMO is like a Thor, having a legendary hammer with immense power in his hand, called Marketing. She understands the real power of digital channels because her department was the lead for most of the online activities that were developed over the last two decades. She owns the customer-facing touch points of the company which are increasingly becoming digital.

Just as Tony Stark built an armored suit to protect his human core and transform himself into a hi-tech superhero, the CIO is protecting the core technology and systems of an organization and can transform the company into technological advances. He understands technology better than anyone else.

It is important to note however that even Iron Man had to continue evolving his technology, as his opponents adapted to his capabilities so do the CIO has to innovate with new ideas and adopt new technologies & trends like IoT, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Blockchain to name a few, in order to stay ahead.

A Chief Digital Officer was not existing for so many years, is like Captain America who was trapped in ice for 70 years and revived in the present day. Like the super patriotism of Captain America, CDO has only one goal – becoming Digital. CDO is a permanent part of the team with all the skills to manage a lot of internal and external change.

Digital transformation has to be taken like a team of Avengers and is a permanent process. It will never stop. Once you digest one wave of disruption through the proper transformation, you will face another one.